In My Hands, The World
by Koi Lungfish
Summary: A character vignette for Reno, after the game.


Title: In My Hands, The World 

**Author: **Koi Lung Fish****

**Disclaimer:** Based on characters and situations from Final Fantasy VII (© 1997, 1998 Square Co., Ltd). Used without permission. Text © 2002, Koi Lung Fish (Mark of Lung. All Rights Reserved.)

**Subject: **A character vignette for Reno, after the game.

            I'm standing in the rain, in the centre of the square. A street-lamp-moon glows overhead, a bright coin you could reach out and pinch from the diamond-rich sky.

            Where do you stand, when the world falls down? When everything you know crashes past your ears. When the things your fathers died for vanish in a ray of light. When you loose … not just the battle, not just the war … when you realise you were never more than a duck blind for the whole shooting match. I wasn't a pawn. I was a part of the fucking chessboard.

            Goddamit, we worked for this. My father. My mother. My grandfather, and his father, and his father before him. We sold our future to them. They owed us.

            Rufus owed us. Owed me. Owed me a life. I swore to him – I swore that my life was his life, and he played chicken with the planetary Doombot from Hell.

            Don't think I didn't know what you were doing, Rufus. We all saw it in your eyes that day. Don't think I didn't know about the nightmares. Those who live to serve will watch your sleep.

            Why didn't you use us? That's what we were for. Turks, warriors, even if I'm the only one left goddamnit I remember what loyalty means. And fealty. Service. Blood oath.

            I didn't slice up my face just to make a point. I could have walked away. I could have given my ancestors the one-finger salute and jumped off the train. I didn't. I'm a Turk; the only Turk. The last Turk, because my old Boss is dead and the other two, hell, they never understood the meaning of it all. They're gonna go hunt monsters in the mines. I wish 'em luck, luck and a swift kiss from oblivion.

            I'm alive. You're dead. That's the wrong way around.

            When Tarx the Red cut his face and threw his blood at the feet of the first Shin-Ra, did he mean to outlive his lord? No. I cut my face and threw my blood at the feet of your father, but goddamnit it's my blood for your blood. I was supposed to die instead of you, for you, with you.

            Because of you.

            It should never have been like this. Sixteen generations are breathing down my neck. I let my liege die. I've betrayed them, everything they worked for, everything they bled for. They died for the Shin-Ra, but I didn't die for you.

            Did you … die for us?

            I don't understand. None of us understood. We were living in Midgar's darkness, and all our light was bloody green. It was them, the others outside the darkness, they understood. They fought for the big stakes … the knights and bishops, the rooks and the queens. Pawn takes King. Checkmate. Bye-bye Sephiroth. Bye-bye Doombot, and bye-bye Turks.

            I can't let it end here. Can history just stop? Can my family be snuffed out, bitten by obscurity? Hell, sure we can. We are the obscure men; we were archers in the thickets, we were long knives in the shadows, we were rifles on the rooftops. Destiny's been getting ready to forget us since Boss Valentine stopped being a human and started being a fairy-tale.

            Crap. "Eat your greens, or Turk Valentine will get you." Is that my father's legacy? Sidekick to a kid's tale? God, someone shoot me whilst I still have a shred of dignity.

            That'd be too easy. You deal with Death, he'll offer you a wholesale price all of your own.

            So where do I go from here? Vanish? Sure, let my father's father's fathers slide behind a curtain of history. I can't. God, if I could, I'd be looking after my father. His body, that is. It'd break his spirit to see the last Turk just flip his bloodline the bird and hop off the train. So I'm looking after his spirit, living the legend – our legend, our personal family saga – becoming what we all swore we'd never be.

            The last Turk.

            The only Turk.

            In my hands, the world fades to a thin rind of light, a circumference of milk. A streetlight making crescents of the pocked-marked moon. A semi-circular scar on a thin cheek. A brand of blood, a birthmark, a promise of death.

            Rufus! You bastard! Your fate was mine!

            How can I live when my master is dead? How can I die when my dreams are alive? How can I cease bleeding this blood when my ancestors have bled it since our blood had name? How can I continue onward, when there is no more path to walk?

            If there is any grace in this world, give me a sign. Give me an omen. Give me anything except the flu, damn the rain.

            Well?

            Nothing?

            Fuck you too, God.

            Things end and things begin. Who were the Turks before Tarx? Who are we, anyway, without memories of ghosts to bind us? I can't see the future and I can't shut my eyes to the past. My dreams are just that – dreams, of what might have been, of what was in an age that died in the light outside Midgar.

            The street-light-moon shines on, still and cold. Oh, to be a street-light, where you can't remember if you were bright or dark before. Shine in the dark, shine in the day, shine, shine like a coin in the darkness at the end of my day.

            Because my day is over. The Turks are over. Tarx' loyalty, it's over. Rufus paid back the blood oath. We're dust in the wind, chaff after the harvest. Where do the servants go when the king is dead?

            I guess I'll find out tomorrow.

            I'm standing the rain. The last Turk. The only Turk.

            I'm getting very wet.

            It's over.

**Author's notes & addenda:**

            Feedback excruciatingly welcome.

            **Doombot:**Diamond Weapon.

**Email:** spacepriest@dial.pipex.com


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